Stop Taking Intellectually Disabled Parents' Babies Away!
- af: Care2.com
- mottagare: Australian Minister for Family, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs Jenny Macklin
Having a disability does not mean a person's parenting instincts disappear, and it absolutely does not justify leaving someone grieving, without counseling or support, after a hospital decides they're unfit to raise their own child.
Australian parents with intellectual disabilities are ten times more likely to have their newborns compulsorily taken away. Hospitals often completely ignore birth parents' rights and stealthily remove children before mothers even get to see them. Not notified of the process, birth parents are left heartbroken and without the chance to say goodbye.
No family deserves to be treated like this. Fortunately, researchers in Sydney have begun developing an initiative that would improve outcomes for children growing up with parents with learning disabilities, meaning fewer children would need to be removed in the first place.
Tell Australia to create protocols that would take both child safety and parents' feelings into account in the case of removal.
Dear Minister Jenny Macklin,
I'm disturbed by how frequently children are taken from parents with intellectual disabilities. Reports have shown that many of these parents do not even have the opportunity to hold a newborn before the child is removed from their care, giving them no time to say goodbye or understand why they suddenly do not have the right to parent the child.
I was also appalled to find out that in most cases, there is hope for these parents to learn how to properly care for their own kin, and this opportunity is stolen from them. They're even left without proper grief counseling or post-natal care, and the trauma has led many to sink into deep depression and even commit suicide. This is not humane.
[Your comments here]I understand that the Healthy Start initiative could provide a great model for determining whether parents' disabilities could risk the safety of a child and then work with them to hone the skills necessarily to thrive as a family. I urge you to take the Healthy Start initiative research into account and create new protocols to help families and prepare them adequately if child removal is truly the only safe option.
Sincerely,
[Your name]
Se flere underskriftsindsamlinger: 
